Matt Birkbeck's critically acclaimed book on Sammy Davis Jr., Deconstructing Sammy: Music, Money and Madness comes out in paperback next week. Like Michael Jackson, Sammy died with major issues concerning his estate and they still haunt his legacy 20 years after his death. This book spells it all out, including Sammy's mob ties, his issues with civil rights, his debts to the IRS, how he got hosed by Jesse Jackson. The book is unique in that it peels away Sammy's life during a 7 year investigation AFTER he died. A pageturner and great read. Here's the link to Amazon. Perhaps we can get a discussion going comparing what happened to Sammy with what is happening to Michael.

http://www.amazon.com/Dec...0061450677



[img]

I found a link to the author talking about how Sammy's wife and employees looted his home as he lay dying. Awful!

http://www.youtube.com/wa...LbsJ3OK764

www.mattbirkbeck.com

Sammy Davis was as loved and hated by both black and white for whatever reason. I definitely think MJ was the Sammy Davis of our generation. Sammy dying at 64 was virtually YOUNG but he had aged so much.

Timmy84 said:

WORD

EXCEPT SAMMY COULD SING AND DANCE IN SAME SONG

POOK JUST SAYING

CHECK OUT COOL PAPERBACK COVER!

IT SAD BUT COOL

i was thinkin of reading sammy's autobiography

or should i read this for starters???

not surprising AT ALL mj idolized him

dearmother said:

Sammy's autobio is VERY good. Cool topic. I will definately be getting this. When folks say Michael was The Greatest, I too nod my head. BUT I always think of Sammy. Can't compare the 2 men because they lived in two totally different times and worlds. The shit that Sammy went through in the service, and as an entertainer as a grown man can't be compared to what Michael went through. And visa verse. In my brain though, Sammy was and IS truly one of The Greatest to ever perform on ANY stage.
[Edited 8/20/09 21:25pm]

nice, i was hoping for a juicy autobiography..moonwalk is kind of a joke to me, it's so watered down. i respect him for writing it that way..and i can understand but still

dearmother said:

Yeah, but as I dusted off my copy of Moonwalk the other day, I was struck by a few things he mentioned. The part where he stated how Elvis was not an influence on his work, but how Elvis' destruction interested him (cause he never wanted to go down that road), made me sit up a bit.

I would love to read this book. Thanks for creating this topic. Sammy is someone who seems sort of forgotten, or not properly respected.

I will never forget seeing him on TV crying over his wife. He said he was emotional because he loved her so and.....she was a Black woman. He said something like he never thought he could love a Black woman like that and he was ashamed that he ever had such a thought....something like that. This was not the type of sentiment I expected from him and it surprised me, to say the least.

bettybop said:

I do feel Sammy gets disrespected. I saw his biography special on A&E years back and Sammy really, he loved everybody, black, white, etc. He just wanted to be loved and respected and I don't really think he was. They had to wait until he was near death to finally give him a tribute. The guy was a true pioneer but I do think he gets overlooked. MJ and James Brown were his students in entertaining a crowd for real.

Timmy84 said:

Sammy had a very hard life, disrespected in so many ways, to me he was much better than Sinatra but had to work four times as hard and still didn't get the love and recognition. And that's just one aspect of it all.

But what a great entertainer, he could just perform unrehearsed and it would be simply great.

Here's a link to the author talking about the book and how poor Sammy's home was being looted while he died.

http://www.youtube.com/wa...LbsJ3OK764

i loved sammy. his celebrity rating in his hey day was never as high as michael's in michael's hay day.
Sammy could dance..sing..act.

I got a hardcover edition when it was released last year.
A truly sad story regarding Sammy but much credit must be given to former federal prosecuter Albert "Sonny" Murray for doing some serious investigative work.

In the past few months the term "Greatest Entertainer" has been thrown around.
In terms of being a complete entertainer, nobody touched Sammy's skill set.

1 - Singer (At a live show you never had to ask, "Is it live or is it Memorex.")

2 - Dancer (Goes without saying)

3 - Actor (Multiple stage & screen roles)

4 - Comedian

5 - Musician



...A very swingin' drummer who also played trumpet & vibes


6 - Impressionist






Sammy Davis Jr. was, and always will be, Mr. Entertainment.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

theAudience said:

Amen to that.

they showed this clip of him dancing in a pbs doc

i guess he was like 5-10 years old with a tophat, i wish could find it online..so cute

dearmother said:

i think theres a fragment of that on the arsenio hall show innerview with sammy

i forgot where but here is the innerview:

dearmother said:

Yeah it should be on YouTube somewhere. Sammy's professional debut came when he was three.

Yes, Sammy is forgotten, which is why I posted this book. Since it's now in paperback you can get it for only $10 bucks on Amazon. And if you read it, check out the similarities to what's happening to the Michael Jackson estate.

Here's the New York Times review (for the hardcover edition)

DECONSTRUCTING SAMMY
Music, Money, Madness, and the Mob.
By Matt Birkbeck.
Amistad/HarperCollins, $25.95.


“Deconstructing Sammy” was written by an investigative journalist, and it shows: Birkbeck has killer leads, gripping kickers and sensational descriptions. This cinematic book reads more like a detective story than a traditional “life of.” It revolves around Sonny Murray, a federal prosecutor and the son of the founders of the Hillside Inn, a famous black-owned hotel in the Poconos. Murray takes it upon himself to get Sammy Davis Jr.’s alcoholic widow, Altovise, sober, and to solve the mystery of the star’s enormous I.R.S. debt: $7 ­million-plus. How, Murray wonders, could a man with boundless talent, who worked almost every day of his life and grossed more than $50 million, die owing so much money? In the course of his rigorous and emotional investigation, Murray learns that Davis became an entertainer because he believed that “by entertaining, he could make all the hurt feelings go away.” He had plenty of those, having been subjected to horrible prejudice and racial violence in the Army. He turned to Judaism after losing his eye in a car accident: “He believed Jews and blacks suffered similarly, and he found comfort in the Torah and its teachings.” With less success, he later turned to cocaine, Satanism and orgies. In the end, Murray cracks the case and saves the widow — sort of. He discovers Davis was so eager to please that he trusted some truly awful people, and no one who had his best interests at heart. As he lay dying in 1990, Birkbeck says, his supposed friends were looting his home. Davis led a rich life — performing as part of the Rat Pack, marching with Martin Luther King, winning a Kennedy Center Honor — but because of the mishandling of his affairs, his legacy has suffered. The book has a stark moral: for a performer without business acumen or good management, all the talent in the world can’t guarantee immortality.

Ada Calhoun is the editor in chief of Babble.com, a blogger for AOL News and a frequent contributor to the Book Review.

armonk said:

Another book to pickup today thanks aromnk.

I watched the clip. The claim of Altovise Davis looting or stealing from her husband... Sammy Davis never took care of business. From the 60's till the day he died; Mr. Davis was always in trouble with IRS, always. Lord knows it was reported constanltly. You've read the book, did Altrovise have any say or did she know Sammy's total assests, money earned yearly, investments and tax payments and returns. When the author says she stole for Sammy/her husband. I don't think he's telling all sides of the story.

Case in point: Altovise Davis was responsible and saddled with her husband tax dept till the day she died. Why? Because they filed joint tax returns. In highsight she should never had filed jointly but separately. His estate was going into receivership anyways and the IRS and the State of CA would have gotten theirs first but Altovise wouldn't not have been burden with his dept.

This is the first I've heard of Sammy Davis ever being a Satanist.

TD3 said:

Yes, you're correct about Altovise. But it's all explained in the book. She was actually a victim not of Sammy but of the people around Sammy. The author did a tremendous amount of research and interviewing. It's a truly tragic story about a great entertainer.

One last thing: Michael Jackson's estate fight is just beginning. Sammy's has been going on for 20 years with no end in sight. There's a lawsuit in federal court in Texas involving several cretins trying to get the Sammy name.

kitbradley said:

I know, right? The hell? I'm definitely coping this book!! I think the last celeb bio I read was Marvin's "Divided Soul." I'm itching for another good one....

Here's a portion of the LA Times review:

Music, Money, Madness,

and the Mob

Matt Birkbeck

Amistad: 288 pp., $25.95

Sammy Davis Jr. was the epitome of the artist as brilliant naif, blazing as he collapses into a cold, dark star, a posthumous object best described (considering Sammy's diminutive stature and gargantuan talent) as a giant dwarf, a fate understood most clearly by those who came later, the lawyers and accountants who first realized Sammy had bounced his last check, busted, so left his descendants nothing but memories and debt.

For years, it turns out, the Candy Man, third from the left in the typical photo of the Rat Pack, had been living beyond his means -- making tons, spending a little more, with debt accruing until it loomed over him like an Everest. As my grandfather used to say, the man who earns $100 and spends $90 has a happy life; the man who makes the same but spends $101 dies in squalor. Sammy is a hero for our times, a personification of the current American Dream, living in a mansion owned by the bank, short the mortgage but certain he can dance his way out. As Sinatra sang, "Riding high in April, shot down in May."

Matt Birkbeck in "Deconstructing Sammy" has done a tremendous amount of reporting into the life of Sammy, but the book is more than a newspaper story. It's a melancholy dirge: Horatio Alger in his stirring rise, but also in the reckless appetite that hurries his fall. It follows Sammy from his Harlem boyhood to his wrenching deathbed (he died of cancer in 1990) in his Beverly Hills mansion, where various hangers-on, seeing the circling vultures, stripped his corpse even before it was a corpse: "During the months prior to Sammy's death, his employees looted his home of memorabilia, jewelry and artwork."

"Deconstructing Sammy" is two narratives spun together. In the first, you have Sammy Davis Jr., "arguably the greatest entertainer of the twentieth century"; in the second, you have Albert "Sonny" Murray Jr., a young black lawyer who rescued Sammy's estate from its creditors (at his death, Sammy owed the IRS $7 million). Murray was a former federal prosecutor, made famous by the case that brought down E.F. Hutton. Murray's parents owned a resort in the Pocono Mountains that catered to a black clientele. It was while standing in the yard of this resort that Murray first saw the woman who would bring him into Sammy-land. She was standing across the road, "tall, thin and black . . . somewhat disoriented, head bobbing softly back and forth." Her name was Altovise Gore, and she was Sammy's widow. She had washed up in the Poconos like flotsam, alcohol-addicted, broke, the IRS dogging her for the outstanding debt.

POOK said:

Well of course, lol

I think Sammy was just being a comedian tho.

armonk said:

Thanks for posting this. My dad's a big Sammy fan and the finances angle will make it all the more interesting for him. Was not aware of the book 'til I clicked here.